Free Republic

This week, our oldest child Maggie turns 18. She and I traveled together this past week visiting potential colleges. Next year she will be out of the house and enrolled in college. I can't help but pause and reflect. Way back in 1999, my husband Jimmy and I were thrilled to welcome her. I had previously suffered a miscarriage, along with all the heartbreak, tears and uncertainty that went with it. It took weekly blood tests to ensure that my progesterone was in the right range, but it worked. My labor began in the middle of the night. Having heard...

Jaybird knew gambling can be addictive, and he made sure I never became a gambler by letting me gamble. Before long, I was handing over all of my hard-earned weekly allowance to him As a boy growing up on Dad’s Mississippi Delta farm in the 1950s, I looked forward to Saturdays, mainly because I didn’t have to go to school, but also because Friday’s paydays were always followed by Saturday’s dice games. I watched and listened, crouched beside Jaybird, my best friend and mentor. After I grasped the fundamentals of craps, as the old black man called the game, he...

TEASING, GROWING UP ON THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA Uncle Virgil wanted a son to name Virgil, Jr., but ended up with a bunch of girls. When the last one came along, Aunt Lillian refused to let the child be named after her father, reasoning that a girl named Virgil would be worse than a boy named Sue. Grudgingly, Auntie agreed to let Virgilene be the child’s middle name. Everybody but me called her Alice, her first name. Virgilene was as uncomely as they come, and because her buckteeth poked out like a piranha’s, she was so ugly that she’d make a...

Every parent looks forward to the day when their young children will begin cleaning up after themselves. So keep that in mind as you watch this short video clip of a little girl helping her Mom in the Kitchen. Take a short break from the news and follow the link below for a cute video clip of the, Little Girl Helping Her Mom With Dishes.

LONDON: Parents who pressure their children to succeed are condemning a generation of middle-class youngsters to stress and depression, it has been claimed. American psychologist Madeline Levine has identified a growing breed of ‘helicopter’ parents, so-called because they hover over all aspects of their children’s lives. These high-earning parents push their children so hard to excel at everything from math and English to sport and music that they leave them feeling hopeless failures. Youngsters grow up miserable and confused after falling short of their parents’ unrealistic expectations. Levine, a clinical psychologist and mother of three, claims in her book The...

Well, this is just a little editorial from summer to FR, to let you know how the Dem activists are all complaining about: No Free Speech in the Dem Party. What a shock-er-ooo, eh? Seems that two pro-Lamont campaigners (both Dem activists) were tossed out for living and breathing near Clinton and Liberman during Clinton's rally for Liberman. And, the Dem activists are all confused about this -- and, mighty peeved. They say they've got the video on HuffPost HERE. (Actually, I could only get a commercial to come up there.) They've got the Dems underground complaining about it HERE....

The adage "like a kid at heart" may be truer than we think, since new research is showing that grown-ups are more immature than ever. Specifically, it seems a growing number of people are retaining the behaviors and attitudes associated with youth. As a consequence, many older people simply never achieve mental adulthood, according to a leading expert on evolutionary psychiatry. Among scientists, the phenomenon is called psychological neoteny. The theory’s creator is Bruce Charlton, a professor in the School of Biology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He also serves as the editor-in-chief of Medical Hypotheses, which...

The box contained magic. Oh, it didn't say that; rather, it said things like,"1/32nd Scale", "A Revell Kit", and had words like "Flying Fortress" emblazoned fearlessly across the top. Pictures of dreadful and desparate combat over Berlin warned the faint of heart that they were passing through friendly lines, across the no-man's land of imagination, and entering into ... the Free-flight Zone. Believe me- the box contained magic. Lovingly peeling off the cellophane, my friends and I paused to savor the treasures within. We were seldom disappointed. Inside were hundreds of pre-formed plastic parts, which, under the tender ministrations of...

Twenty-five years ago, most men in the Tampa Bay area married by age 35. But since 1980, the number of never-married men 35 to 55 has jumped sevenfold. ST. PETERSBURG - On the eve of his 50th birthday, Robert Mendenhall was trying to decide whether to spend the big day with someone new or with his ex-girlfriend. She had held his interest the longest: eight months. Mendenhall, who works in regional sales for a roofing and window company, hangs out with half a dozen never-married men in their late 40s and early 50s. They are successful at their jobs, keep...

Do you work long hours? Are your kids spending more time with their grandparents or the at the babysitter's than with you? Well, according to a Bristol University study, children aged below two years, who are left under the care of their grandparents or close family friends, are not likely to flourish at school. On the other hand, children left with paid carers are more likely to come out with flying colours in future. Researchers examined 7,000 children born in the Avon district in 1991 and 1992 from birth until they were seven years old. The 'significant' detrimental effects when...

Johnny wants to be like his dad. He waited and watched from the car, after his dad stopped and changed the tire on that old couple's car... and then refused the money that the old man offered him. They are going fishing again, just like before, and grandpa will be there too, and they'll go out in his boat, though now, they'll be a little late! Still, if his dad figures that it was the right thing to do, even if it cut a few minutes into their big trip, then Johnny will file that away, for future reference. This...

I have some bad news to report. My daughter is happy at college. Make that very happy. I should be very happy for her, but I am not. In fact, I'm downright depressed. When my wife and I loaded up the car with all her worldly possessions back in September to start her freshman year, she was nervous and we were sad. We told her we'd write and call. She told us she would write and call. We did. And she did. A lot in the beginning. A lot less now. There was a time when I e-mailed her every...